In October this year, the front page of the South Wales Echo carried a report claiming that 60 trafficked women were working as prostitutes in Cardiff, being forced to see up to 10 men a day. The newspaper focused on the story of an 18-year-old Lithuanian woman who was made to work at three massage parlors in the city and had been repeatedly gang-raped and beaten. She was forced to dance naked on poker tables for customers, was burned with cigarettes and threatened that if she went to the police, her family would be harmed. A leader column in the same edition said that the “hideous trade” in sex slavery must be stopped.

At the back of the South Wales Echo were ads for the very same brothels that had been exposed on the front page.